Naruto :: Alternative from the day one
Warnings: not good Sandaime, bad Konoha, child neglect, etc. ...
"Grrrhhh!" The great Kyuubi no Yoko roared angrily as the dark half of its soul, along with the half of its power, was ripped off it by the Death god, only to be sealed in that damned blond ningen's body.
'My body's gone numb... What a heavy chakra...' Yondaime Hokage thought as the first part of his plan was completed. Now he needed to seal the rest of the beast into Naruto. "Now for the eight trigrams seal..." The blond man said to himself as he summoned the ceremonial throne for the sealing... Unfortunately for him this was where the things stopped going according to his plans, as, even as weakened as it was, the Kyuubi managed to brake free of the chakra chains Kushina was using to keep it in place.
Using its freedom, the nine-tailed demon tried to kill the damn blond ningen (the older one), before he could do something else... To bad the redhead it was sealed in previously managed to move and took the hit instead. But the blond Hokage continued with the ritual and had already placed the formula for the seal on his son's stomach.
"Minato..." Kushina whispered, before coughing some blood. "I'm going to die anyway..." Indeed, with the huge hole in her stomach, thanks to the Kyuubi's claw, there was no chance that she will live even five more minutes... "Seal the rest of it back into me..." She coughed more blood. "With no Kyuubi, that man's... plans will be ruined, and Naru-chan... will be able to live... a normal life..."
Shinigami, that was following Minato's mental orders, stopped before it completed the transition of the rest of the beast's soul and yoki into the child, though its hand had partially entered the boy's body. Instead, the Death God none too gently pushed the 'good' half of the Kyuubi into Kushina's still living body. The stress of having the bijuu being put back into her was too much for the red-haired kunoichi, though, and she died a second after the seal was complete, sending both of their souls away from the world of living...
"We are done here..." Minato whispered, before his own soul, along with the 'dark' half of the Kyuubi that he had sealed into himself earlier, was collected by the Death God...
Now that the barrier that kept them away had collapsed, the Konoha shinobi entered the area, wanting to see that their Hokage was alright... They didn't know that the jutsu he had used was a self-sacrificial one. Sarutobi Hiruzen, though, knew that...
"Your will of fire was very strong indeed, Minato." The Third Hokage said quietly, as he approached the ceremonial throne where now orphaned Naruto lay, with the fresh seal painted on his stomach. Picking the young boy, Sarutobi ordered the shinobi to take care of their dead leader and his wife, while he made sure that Naruto's seal was strong – not being able to see the Shinigami, Sarutobi didn't knew that the the Kyuubi, in the end, wasn't sealed in the boy...
~/ *** \~
The next morning pretty much everyone in Konoha that wasn't in hospital (or whatever was left of it after the Kyuubi's rampage through the village) assembled in front of the Hokage tower: the reinstalled Third Hokage had an important information for them... Finally, Sarutobi, once again wearing his Kage robes, appeared in front of the crowd with Naruto in his arms.
"Dear citizens of Konohagakure no Sato..." The elderly man began his speech. "Yesterday the great disaster befell our village, as the great demon, the Kyuubi no Yoko, decided to attack us. Many brave shinobi died yesterday to protect the village and their loved ones, and our beloved Yondaime Hokage was among them. Minato-dono, though, managed to stop the beast and seal it away into young Naruto there." Sarutobi raised the boy in his arms for everyone to see. "This boy is a hero like our late Yondaime, for he is keeping the beast at bay, protecting us from it." ...Unfortunately, not many saw the things the way Hiruzen wanted them to see.
"Kill the demon!" Someone shouted, and many cries to kill the demon boy were now heard from the crowd. Some brave ones even tried to kill the boy by throwing kunai and shuriken at him...
"Be quiet!" Sandaime Hokage roared, unleashing killing intent so powerful that even the strongest jounin and ANBU wanted to flee from the man. "Young Naruto here is not the demon that is sealed in him, nor he will be punished in any for for something his tenant did." The people, consumed by their grief, didn't want to listen, though, as they still were demanding the death of the 'Kyuubi brat'... In the end, when everything else failed, Sarutobi had to use his authority to install several laws that hopefully will protect Naruto...
~/ *** \~
Naruto's life was not an easy one. Not with the entire village, save for the select few, hating his guts with ungodly passion for the reason unknown... For the first two years of his life he lived in the hospital, constantly guarded by a platoon of ANBU – not that the masked ninjas were of much protection, as there still were at least fifty assassination attempts.
Once he was two years old, Sarutobi decided that the seal was strong enough, and it was safe to send young Naruto to the orphanage... Too bad, the matron saw the boy as the Kyuubi incarnate, and only pure luck was keeping the young Uzumaki alive with all those attempts to kill him she made – from 'forgetting' his outside in the middle of the winter to outright trying to burn him alive... In other words, the three years Naruto had spent in the orphanage was a pure hell for the boy, and no matter what he did, he couldn't find out what he did to make everyone hate him so much...
For his fifth birthday, the Third Hokage gave Naruto his own apartment in the section of the village that was mostly occupied by shinobi – if he were to be place in the civilian sector, the boy would be murdered within an hour... Still, the assassination attempts didn't stop. Actually, their number had only increased, but as he wasn't confined to the orphanage, Naruto had better chances to run away and hide, if someone came with the intent of offing him... Still, as many of his would-be assassins were shinobi, the five years old blond had little to no chance of hiding from them... So tonight he was once again delivered to the hospital by an ANBU operative...
"How's he?" Sarutobi asked the doctor – one of the few here, who didn't see the boy as the demon. The doctor shook his head.
"I will not lie to you, Hokage-sama. It's a miracle that he is still alive... If he wasn't an Uzumaki, he'd be six feet under right now.. And what is worse, as usual, his tenant is doing nothing at all to save him... We can't detect even the faintest traces of its yoki in Naruto's chakra." The Third Hokage nodded with a sigh. It appeared that Minato's seal was too good, if that was even possible. He needed to do something, or one of these days Naruto's Uzumaki blood will not be enough to keep the boy alive... Damn those ignorant villagers that couldn't see the scroll from the kunai sealed in it.
"I see..." The 'professor' said with another sigh. "Please do everything you can to heal Naruto." The doctor bowed.
"Of course, Hokage-sama. We will do what we can." The medic bowed and started walking back to the room where the young Uzumaki was treated from his wounds.
~/ *** \~
By the time Naruto was seven, the villagers' hate towards him lessened a bit, and now they were mostly just glaring at him and calling him names and overcharging him for anything he bought, and forbidding their children from being his friends, instead of physically attacking him. Of course, every now and then someone tried to stab him in the back with a rusty knife or to set him on fire with a fire jutsu...
Also, now Naruto was going to shinobi academy, but, unlike his classmates, the blond boy didn't want to be a Konoha shinobi. He was going to the academy to acquire the skills he'd need to survive outside the village walls – he had decided long ago that when he would be ready, he'll run away from Konoha...
It was another two years, before Naruto deemed himself ready to leave the Hidden Leaf village. He now had some basic ninja tools – they were of a bad quality, but that still was better than nothing at all. He also now knew how to survive in the wilderness, and how to protect himself against an untrained opponent...
So, one night, he collected everything he owned – not much there – and hid himself in one of the carts of a caravan that was heading to some other county... Thankfully for him, the guards at the gates didn't check the caravan for chakra signatures, or he would have been discovered: Naruto had very large chakra reserves for his age... And once the caravan was far enough from Konoha, the blond Uzumaki sneaked away and started traveling on his own, following one simple rule: no matter where he went, he was getting further away from the Hidden Leaf...
It was roughly the end of the second month Naruto was alone in the wilderness, and he was slowly making his way through the forests of the Tea county... Suddenly, he heard something behind him in the bushes. Not wanting to become some predator's dinner, the young boy ran. Of course, a bear followed him, but the blond was much more agile than the beast and was successfully avoiding the bear's attempts to throw him down on the ground...
But the luck wasn't entirely on his side, though, as he soon found himself in front of the river that he could cross only by a thin tree that fell across the comb the river ran through... And as he was doing that, his foot slipped on the moss and he fell into the cold water, hitting his head hard against the stones on the river bed in the process...
~/ *** \~
Naruto woke up an undetermined amount of time later, lying on the riverside not far from a 'small' waterfall. He was really cold, he was very hungry and his head hurt so much. But his desire to live was as strong as ever, so he pulled himself out of the water, and somehow made his way into the cave behind the waterfall... Removing his clothes – so that he wouldn't freeze to death during the night that would fall soon – Naruto ate the last stale bread he had on him, before lying down on the ground, hoping that his head will be better once he woke up.
Unbeknownst to him, his entering the cave woke something up. Something big and incredibly powerful that slept in this cave for centuries. This something, of course, left it lair in the depths of the cave to investigate what had woken it up...
When Naruto woke up the next morning, his first thought was that he had hit his head too hard and was hallucinating now. As it turned out, that wasn't the case here, and there indeed was a naked woman sitting on the rock a couple of feet away from him.
Even though he was only nine and too young to truly appreciate the sight, he still could tell that the woman was beautiful, despite her strange, somehow inhuman, appearance. She was of an average height, about 5'5'', and had a slender body with perfectly sized for her C-cup breasts. Her skin was smooth and really pale, appearing to be almost white, while her nipples were very pale pink. Her knee-long hair was greenish-gray and tangled, like she just woke up from a restless sleep... What made Naruto slightly uneasy about her, aside from her mysteriously appearing there, were her eyes: they were serpentine: yellow-golden with a slitted pupils.
"Who are you, and what are you doing this close to my lair?" The woman asked bluntly in a slightly hissing voice... for a moment the blond even thought that her tongue was forked, like it belonged to a snake.
"M-my name i-is Naruto U-uzumaki." The blond replied, stuttering a bit. "A-and I just n-needed a place t-to spend the n-night." He made a small pause, before adding: "I'll leave n-now." The mysterious woman, though, was having none of it as she shook her head.
"Uzumaki you say?" She asked. "Last time I heard that name, they were a small family that traveled alongside with the heir of Rikkudou Sennin." Then her eyes landed on his stomach. "And you are marked by Shinigami-chan?" Naruto stared at the woman in shock: he had heard the myths about the Sage of Six Paths, but this woman was saying that she was alive back then? That and the way she just called the Death God using the '-chan' honorific... Who was she? Naruto tried to sit up (and prepare to escape from this woman), but she noticed that and, appearing right next to him, pushed him back into lying position with her single finger. "Rest, human, you need to heal your wounds, before you can go." And then she added quietly, but he still heard her perfectly: "Not that I'll letting you..." Already knowing that his life was now in her hands, Naruto submitted.
"Just one question: who would you be?" The woman narrowed her eyed for a moment, but then relaxed as she understood that the boy in front of her really didn't knew who, or better yet, what she was.
"I had many names, young Uzumaki... I myself like the name Miyoko... But you most likely you know me as Hachibi no Hachimata or, maybe, as Yamato no Orochi." Naruto fainted as soon as his brain finally processed this information and he finally understood who this woman was: a demon older than the bijuu...
Stub adoption:
* You can adopt either the whole stub, or its part.
* If Naruto runs away from Konoha, he should NEVER willingly return there (other than for its destruction)
* If Naruto meets Miyoko, she should become his mentor and (a bit later) his mate. Lemons are encouraged.
* Naruto must be much darker than canon one, and he must not forgive easily if at all. He may be evil.
* No yaoi pairings for Naruto in any case.
* No pairings with Konoha girls for Naruto in any case (even if you have him stay at Konoha, he should end with a kunoichi from a different village).
* Have fun.